


the devil makes three

by downmoon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Good Omens Fusion, Angels, Demons, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-13 20:56:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11768220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downmoon/pseuds/downmoon
Summary: it's the end of the world as we know it, but no one's feeling fine





	1. (you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemedy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemedy/gifts).



> 1\. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEMEDY!!!!!! you are a treasure of a friend, and i hope this brings a slice of joy to your day ( ˘ ³˘)❤
> 
> 2\. there are a handful of unnamed characters in this, partly because i felt it worked better to keep some of them unnamed, and partly because-
> 
> 3\. -i am no where near the level of genius that terry prachett and neil gaiman were when they wrote good omens. this, however, was a ton of fun to write.
> 
>  
> 
> i will however tell you who i had in mind for which characters if you ask.

Suga’s apartment- well, it’s _nice_. Definitely nice. It’s all sleek, modern furniture, high end machinery in the kitchen. Chrome accents, dark wood, lush, spotless carpets. It’s spacious, with huge, gorgeous windows overlooking the city, and perfectly regulated temperatures, but despite the pleasantly warm environment, the whole thing feels _cold_. It feels like Suga opened a magazine on interior design and imitated everything he saw on the glossy pages, which, in Oikawa’s humble opinion, is probably exactly what he did.

“Eleven years!” Suga says, not for the first time since Oikawa’s presence was unexpectedly demanded at his apartment. Oikawa watches him pace out of the airy living room, a spritzer bottle in hand. The only things in the apartment that seem to have been placed there on a whim of Suga’s affection are the plants, and he’s been pacing throughout the apartment and aggressively misting them for the past hour or so. Oikawa gingerly plucks his glass off the coffee table in front of him and sips at his wine.

“Yes, dear,” he calls, “eleven years.”

“How could we miss him for _eleven years?”_

“We’ve been over this, haven’t we? Several times. Is the pacing helping, by the way?”

Suga comes stomping back into the living room, his omnipresent sunglasses perched on top of his head as he scowls down at Oikawa.

“No,” he grits out, “but it makes me feel better.”

“Ah. Pace away then.”

“You’re awfully calm about this.”

“Well,” Oikawa says, wrinkling his nose and setting his wine glass back down. It was a beautiful bottle earlier, but Suga’s mood has soured it, and Oikawa’ll be blessed if he tries to down something with the taste of vinegar. “There’s not much we can do right now. Might as well sit tight until we have something to go on.”

“Oikawa, we’ve lost the _Antichrist._ Isn’t your side _terribly_ concerned about that?”

“Oh, I imagine,” Oikawa says, looking at his nails with thoughtful consideration, “but I’m not in touch with them at the moment, you see.”

Suga sets the spritzer down on the coffee table, and takes a seat next to Oikawa on the (white, leather, _very_ expensive) couch. He squints at him, as if he’s trying to puzzle something out.

“Are you _laying low?”_ he asks. He sounds a little too accusatory for someone who has just been spritzing plants, for God’s sake, but it hits the nail too directly on the head.

“You’d do the same if you were in my position,” he grumbles, shifting a little on the couch so Suga’s golden gaze isn’t quite so piercing.

“I don’t believe it,” Suga says, “an angel hiding out in my apartment.”

“Hey, you’re the one who _demanded_ that I come over, whining about how you didn’t know your way around the city yet.”

“Yeah, but now I know you had ulterior motives. No wonder you got over here so fast. What, did you think my presence would throw ‘em off your scent?”

Oikawa crosses his arms over his chest, and accidentally settles a little more deeply into the couch. He doesn’t need to say anything; the frown over his forehead speaks loud enough, and Suga snorts. Oikawa stands up with a huff (and much difficulty, if he’s honest; the couch is entirely too plush, and he found himself slowly sinking into it, the longer he sat) and snatches up the spritzer. There’s a few plants behind him that Suga hasn’t ferociously misted yet. Might as well do something.

He hears Suga sigh behind him, and the sound of him flopping backwards onto the couch.

“Well,” he starts, “any idea where our kid’s been shipped off to?”

“Not really. There’s...thousands of directions that family could’ve gone when they left the hospital. I guess the best we can do is wait for the signs and follow them to the center of it all.”

Oikawa smiles a little as the plants shift ever so slightly as they’re hit with water. He risks a glance behind him, to Suga dramatically sprawled out on the couch. No harm in adding a little something special, if Suga doesn’t know about it.

“I suppose you’re right,” Suga says, “although I don’t like this waiting.”

“We’ve been waiting for thousands of years,” Oikawa says, “what’s the harm in waiting a little longer?”

Suga grumbles out some noise and sits up on the couch.

“Still don’t like it. I hate feeling like we’re missing something. That hitchhiker we picked up on Monday- remember him? With the pretty green eyes?”

“When we were coming back from Disney World, right? Suga, he was pretty _everything_. He looked like he should’ve been on a catwalk. His cheekbones could cut glass.”

“Yes, okay, you’re right. He left something in the back seat- I keep forgetting to take it out- like, a tube with these sticks in it.”

“Sounds like a kid’s game.”

“I think it’s a fortune thing.”

Oikawa stops misting and looks behind his shoulder.  
  
“Like, seeing the future and all that?” he asks. Suga nods.

“I think it’s something from Japan, but I can’t remember what it’s called. Anyway, the point I’m making- I got the oddest feeling that he knew something.”

“What kind of something?”

“I-I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. But I kept seeing him in the rear view mirror. Kept looking between us like he knew something.”

“What’s this have to do with the Apocalypse?”

Suga sighs, and pushes himself off the couch.

“Nothing, I guess. Just searching for a clue. You want tea?”

“Yes, please.”

Suga makes his way to the kitchen. Oikawa can hear him puttering around with his sophisticated machinery, muttering curses under his breath as he struggles to make it work. Oikawa smirks at the plants, contentedly misting them. Sometimes it’s the simple things in life he appreciates the most, like watering Suga’s plants so the poor things don’t get cursed into oblivion, or listening to Suga curse _himself_ while encountering a difficulty he laid on humanity in the first place.

There’s a great clatter of something over Suga’s countertops, as the door buzzes. Oikawa, too, finds himself startled by the sound. He and Suga have known each other since the Beginning, and while that might qualify them as friends, he’s sure Suga would’ve mentioned other acquaintances by now. At least, acquaintances besides those in his stories. Which- hm. Maybe he should leave.

Except, Suga’s front door is blown off its hinges before he can even take a step forward, and the last thing he remembers is a nasty looking face with a tuft of blonde hair down the center of his skull grinning at him before he’s overtaken by blinding darkness.

 

* * *

 

There’s a crater in Suga’s living room.

Well, more like a scorch mark, but a _huge_ one. Like someone just smote an angel on his carpet.

“Oh, that’s-” Suga starts, but he can’t quite finish the thought. He feels dizzy, all of a sudden, staring at the smoking carpet.

“Time’s up, Suga!”

He tears his eyes away from the scorch mark, and scrutinizes the demon in front of him. One of the lower levels, but he can’t remember his name. Nasty thing, though, as demonstrated by his greeting.

“Ah,” Suga says, taking a careful step back, “about that-”

“No more excuses! No more talking, no more slinking your way out of this.”

“Well, you know, I wouldn’t call it ‘slinking’ so much as a...rearrangement of plans.”

The demon frowns, confusion obvious even with the snarl across his face, but he presses boldly on.

“Doesn’t matter,” he states, “Down Below wants a word with you, and I’ve been sent to _escort_ you.”

“Yes, well-” Suga starts. He stumbles over the spritzer, dropped where Oikawa had been standing just a few moments before. “My plants,” he says, bending to pick up the spritzer.  
  
“What?”

“I can’t just leave my plants, you know. I _won’t._ I’ve been nurturing them for ages, and they’ll just die without me.” He turns and gives a half-hearted little spray to the especially perfect orchid he’s been raising for years. Honestly, the plants would do just fine without him. A little thing like his absence for all of eternity, while he’s tortured back into the slug he was before he crawled out of Hell, isn’t enough to kill them. Hell, they’d probably thrive without his gentle, yet insistent, threat on their lives.

But he’s not about to let this demon in on his secret, not while he’s planted a touch of confusion in whatever excuse for a brain that thing has.

The demon scowls now, stepping a little closer to Suga’s curious plants.

“So?” he says, “Who cares if they die?”

 _“I_ care. I’ve put a lot of time into these things.”

“Are they evil?”

“Y-eess,” Suga decides, “pure evil. The worst evil.” He punctuates his sentence with another spritz, but jerks his hand back in surprise as something burns his fingertips. He sets the spritzer down as discreetly as possible, not wanting to draw attention to himself, and examines his fingers. Or, the smoking remnants of what used to be the tips of two fingers. He looks to the spritzer, studies the bead of water forming on the tip, back to his fingers.

The spritzer.

His fingers.

The spritzer.

That Oikawa had been using.

The demon.

“How evil?” he’s saying, leaning down and peering at one of the bushy ferns. “Do they eat human flesh? Spit acid?”

“Yeah, you know,” Suga says, fingers slipping over the plastic trigger, “all the bad stuff.” 

 

* * *

 

Suga’s never really had a taste for all the bad stuff. Humans don’t need much of a push to get themselves into all kinds of nasty situations, and Suga was always more curious than downright _demonic_. He doesn’t exactly have a sense of what shame really is, but there are certainly some things he’s not so proud of, like melting a comrade, no matter how devilish, with holy water.

He had it coming, Suga reasons with himself, as he takes the steps two at a time. He _smote_ Oikawa, for Hell’s sake; he would’ve gotten his comeuppance sooner or later. Suga just assured that it was sooner.

When he makes it safely down the stairs and outside his apartment building, he realizes he doesn’t have anywhere to go. He has no information, no clues, no direction in which to head to, besides away from his apartment, lest any more unexpected _comrades_ show up.

He stands on the sidewalk next to his car, keys in hand, his favorite ratty jacket thrown over one shoulder, and ponders the possibilities laid out in front of him, when four figures on motorcycles roar up the quiet street.

He’s staring, the whole neighborhood’s staring, but there isn't a force on the earth that could bring Suga to tear his eyes away. As soon as he caught sight of them he knew who they were, and they probably knew exactly who he was as well. But it doesn’t stop him from pushing his sunglasses up his nose, or shifting nervously where he stands. Doesn’t stop him from feeling beyond nauseous, either; he hasn’t felt this sick since the first McDonald’s went up.

The bikes slow to a stop on the road in front of him, and four helmeted heads turn his way. Three visors are nudged up, and three sets of piercing eyes stare at him. He swallows nervously.

“Hey,” one of them calls, a woman, “where’s Florida? We got the wrong magic kingdom.”

Not how Suga was expecting the conversation to go.

 _“Florida?”_ he says, “what is that? A disease?”

“I _told_ you we weren’t in the States,” another one of them says, thumping the woman on the shoulder. She squawks, and thumps him back, hard enough that he nearly tilts completely off his bike.

“Oh,” Suga says in realization, “it’s one of the States. Sorry, I’m not from here. Uh, this is California. Florida’s maybe-” he points vaguely down the street, “-that way.”

Three heads follow the line of his hand, nod sharply, and slide their visors back into place. One figure, however, remains staring at him, and Suga does his best to stand still. He can almost feel the heat of the figure’s gaze on him, picking him apart molecule by molecule.

The bikes rev, and Suga finally shakes free of this thing’s stare, blinking rapidly behind his sunglasses in an attempt to clear his head.

“Uh,” he starts, clearing his throat and speaking a little louder over the sound of the engines, “it’ll take some time to get there on bikes, lords.”

If any of them notice the slip of his tongue, they ignore it. Or they already have him figured out. More likely.

The figure dressed all in black, dark like a void, an eternal gaping hole with no escape, finally turns away from Suga, looking down the road in front of him.

 _TIME IS NO PROBLEM_ , the figure says, in a voice deep as the ocean, rumbling like a thunderstorm across the neighborhood. Suga is frozen where he stands, clutching his car keys and waiting for the instant where he’s banished into oblivion, but then the dark figure cackles like a hyena, and all four of them tear down the street and around the corner.

Suga stares at the trail of smoke they left behind, his mind spinning. ‘Magic kingdom’ is ringing a bell somewhere in this head of his, something from a commercial or an ad, something he’s seen in passing, maybe. Something from earlier in the week. Oikawa’d know- he’d always thrived on being up to date on celebrity gossip and modern entertainment, anything he could stick his nose in- but.

“Well, he’s out of the picture,” Suga mutters to himself, stepping off the sidewalk and unlocking his car. It makes his stomach twist sourly, the thought of the scorch mark still upstairs on his carpet. Regardless, he has to move forward. If the Horsemen- horsewoman? Horse...folk?- are moving, then time, regardless of what that black figure had said, is running out. And Florida is a better clue than absolutely nothing. He can figure out this ‘magic kingdom’ business on the way. Probably.

“This is some way to go,” Suga grumbles, shrugging on his jacket, “racing the four Horse- _people_ of the Apocalypse across the country.” But then, as he slides in behind the wheel, and the car he’s loved and adored for so many years growls to life, he figures.

What the Hell. It’ll make for a good story.

Suga smiles, the edges of it just turning wicked as he easily slips his car from its parking spot, and guns it. 

 

* * *

 

Wakatoshi leads a simple life. He works, sees his friends on the weekends, runs 5ks when he gets the chance. He has a pleasant, if rather eccentric, neighbor, a nice job, comfortable apartment. He falls into his simple routines day after day, and his friends tease him for it, try to shake up his evenings and weekends with spontaneous adventures, but he finds comfort in the routine. He likes knowing what to expect.

Thus, when something’s off, he recognizes it right away. He’s elbow deep in sudsy water when he feels something akin to a little tickle in his head. Not _on_ it, but in it, like something’s prodding at his brain.

And then a voice that isn’t his own comes out of his mouth.

_“Oh! Seems I’ve finally landed someplace. Ah, sorry, this must be quite shocking. I’ve had a bit of trouble this afternoon, you see, so it can’t be helped.”_

“Uh,” Wakatoshi starts, waiting a beat to see if anything else will come streaming out of his mouth “um, who are you?”

_“I have many names, most of which are incomprehensible to human beings, so for simplicity’s sake, call me Oikawa.”_

“Right. And so...what exactly are you doing here?”

_“Look, it’s a long story, and to explain it all would take way more time than I have to spare right now. The short of it is I’ve been...ah, displaced, from my corporeal form, and yours was the first body I was able to slip into. It’s a shame, really. I liked that body. I had the hair just right.”_

“So you’re possessing me.”

_“No, no, no! Don’t think of it that way. I’m just hitching a ride for a while. Indefinitely.”_

Wakatoshi finally draws his hands out of the sink full of dishes, and dries them carefully on a hand towel.

_“Where are you going? I need some information, you know, like where I am. I’m trying to get to California- I have a friend there, maybe. Actually, he might not be doing so well right now, considering what happened to me. But it’s very important I get back there!”_

“You’re not in California,” Wakatoshi says, opening the door to his apartment. He’s rather calm, he thinks, for being possessed by whatever’s landed in his body. “You’re in Florida, but not for long. I’m positive my neighbor is a witch, and I’m certain he can exorcise something like you.”

_“I’m not possessing you, you idiot! And no witch would be able to touch me, so you’re wasting time, something we don’t have much of! Stop moving! Stop it! I command you to stop-!”_

Wakatoshi does stop, but not because of the screeching voice telling him so. When he opens his front door, the clouds are wrong. Dark and angry and swirling violently in the sky, all seeming to draw in towards a center point away in the distance. He’s seen the beginnings of a hurricane, probably dozens of times, but this.

 _This_ is so much worse.

“This isn’t right,” Wakatoshi manages. Another part of him scoffs.  
_“It’s far from right. Listen, guy-”_

“Wakatoshi.”

_“Okay. Wakatoshi. Forget California. Forget whatever else I said. We need to head for the center of that storm.”_

“Uh-”

_“I know what you’re thinking, and just forget about it, alright? Go towards that.”_

“Uhm. No?”

_“Lord, please help me. Look, the world as you know it? Gone tomorrow, if we don’t stop it. And I kinda like living here, so if you don’t mind-”_

“How do you know this?”

_“What?”_

“If you expect me to listen to the demon possessing me-”

_“I’m not a demon!”_

“-then explain how you know the world will end tomorrow.”

_“I may be...involved...with this mess. Look, it was eleven years ago, and I didn’t have a choice, alright? It’s kind of my job. But I want to fix it, and I know other people who want to fix it, too, and clearly it’s all about to boil over in that direction there, so we really need to head over that way, wherever the center is.”_

Wakatoshi considers. Weighs the options. On the one hand, there’s a demon possessing him, even if it tries to insist it’s not a) possessing him, and b) a demon. This thing could be, and in all likelihood _is_ probably lying to him. On the _other_ hand, Wakatoshi can’t think of a single reason why it would lie to him. Well, he _can_ , but he also has a very strange feeling in his gut, and it’s not too often he ignores those instincts.

“Okay,” he finally decides on.

_“Yes! Okay, let’s hop in your car-”_

“-but I need some things first.”

_“Fine, alright! What do you need?”_

“My neighbor.” He spins sharply on his heel, and marches over to the door next to his. If this is going to turn out like he’s starting to feel it might, he’d much rather have someone who he’s 99% sure has some type of actual connection with the supernatural on his side.

Just in case.


	2. (me)

Like, okay.

Koutarou does his grocery shopping like any other responsible, adult-shaped person- at midnight, when no one else but the sleepy staff are around, and he can peruse and bargain shop and splurge without any old ladies bashing into his cart, or little babies screaming for attention. But then, he’s going about his business, lip syncing out a _sick_ power ballad with a package of spaghetti, and this dude-

_This dude._

-appears at the other end of the aisle. And normally, he wouldn’t really care if someone caught him doing something stupid. That other person would usually be so confused and/or startled by whatever Koutarou’s up to that they’d book it out of the aisle, and Koutarou would be left in peace.

But oh _man,_ this guy is _fine_. Tall, fit, dark hair, these razor-sharp cheekbones. Koutarou stops dead in his tracks, and Whitney Houston nails it on the soundsystem without his backup, but he doesn’t even care. This guy doesn’t run away, and they _talk_ , somehow. Koutarou doesn’t really remember what he said, but next thing he knew he was back at this guy’s place, a cart full of groceries forgotten at the store. And now it’s morning, maybe, and the only thing he can remember from last night brings a cocky smile to his face.

He groans despite himself, and then his stomach groans more than just awesome sex out of his brain. He rolls out of the strange- empty- bed, and finds his pants thrown into a corner of the room, his shirt tossed in the vague direction of the window. It’s not until after he’s pulled his shirt over his head that he notices the general disarray of the bedroom; clothes all over the floor, notes and books and- feathers?- tossed over the desk, a plant in the corner that looks...more sinister than it has any right to be. Honestly, it looks like someone turned the room upside down in some kind of violent search for something.

“Hah,” Koutarou murmurs, suddenly intensely uncomfortable with the room. He fumbles the door open and slips out of the room. The rest of the apartment is a scattered mess, just like the bedroom. Koutarou’s maybe not the neatest of all people, but really, would it kill this guy to pick up a little bit?

He’s intent on just leaving, locking up the empty apartment and just cutting his losses, chalking it up as a fun night, a story to remember fondly, but he catches sight of a bright bowl of oranges on the counter as he walks by the kitchen, and he remembers those piercing green eyes of...oh, what was his name? Aghashi? So he nabs an orange, and hey, if it ends up that he takes his time peeling it, and Akachi comes back from wherever he disappeared to, well.

He’s always been a sucker for green eyes, anyway.

He only gets about one good peel into the orange when the front door opens, and it startles him badly enough that he almost drops the damn thing.

“Aha,” Koutarou calls, “you came back!”

“Yes, I live here.”

_Akaashi,_ that’s his name! He appears in the doorway in a t shirt and jeans, but like. A _t shirt_ and _jeans._ He looks just as sultry and mysterious as he did last night, maybe even more so, even though it’s broad daylight, and the night isn’t there to shroud everything in sexy mystery.

“Well, I was just about to leave, so-”  
  
“Why?” Akaashi says, and it’s honestly so genuine that Koutarou finds _himself_ confused.

_“Well,_ it’s just. It’s your place, and you weren’t here, and. I mean, people don’t usually stick around after a hookup…”

Akaashi rolls his eyes, and Koutarou sighs a little, because it’s _hot_ , okay?

Alright, so maybe he’s a little hopeless already.

“You won’t be leaving,” Akaashi says. He sets two plastic bags on the counter, and Koutarou jumps back a little at the sudden invasion of space.

“Uh…”  
  
“My fortune details it.”  
  
Wait.

“Sorry, maybe I missed something, but, ah, fortunes?”

Akaashi’s giving him another look, like Koutarou should know something he obviously doesn’t.

“Koutarou Bokuto, age 24, Virgo. Your great-great-great grandfather killed my great-great-great grandmother over a hundred years ago. He cut her throat after getting a bad fortune.”

He should be feeling something right now. Sympathy. Horror. Sadness. Curiosity as to how Akaashi knows his _sign._ Any one of these things, and a dozen more emotions that he can’t come up with on the fly, but the only thing stirring low in his stomach is a deep, chasm-like sense of _dread._

“Great-great-great Grandpa Fudo did that?” he says, his voice coming out in a little squeak.

“According to the documents my family has,” Akaashi answers. “Are you alright? You’re looking rather pale.”

He’s not, really, and he’s getting the strong feeling that he should have left while he had the chance.

“Is this some...thing to exact revenge for you grandmother?” he asks in a faint voice. He stumbles backwards a little bit, suddenly dizzy. He grips the countertop behind him.

“What?” Akaashi says, and then something dawns upon him, and Koutarou sees his expression change for the first time.

“No,” he’s quick to say, “no, no, no. Oh, no, I’m sorry, that’s not what it’s about at _all._ I just thought- I mean, I assumed his family knew as much about their ancestors as mine does.”

Akaashi stops his explanation as Koutarou goes a little wobbly. He rushes for a chair, and with a hand to his elbow, guides Koutarou down.

“I should’ve explained,” Akaashi says, “I’m sorry.”

“ ‘S alright,” Koutarou murmurs. “I _legit_ thought you were gonna kill me, but you aren’t, so.”

“No, no, far from it. My fortune’s outlined our meeting and our...time together, so it was meant to happen.”

Koutarou squints at Akaashi, who stares back at him rather passively.

“Okay,” Koutarou says, “what is this _fortune_ thing you keep talking about?”

Akaashi’s got another look on his face, and Koutarou has the feeling that they’re both on entirely different wavelengths. They’re gonna have to have a chat about this.

“My great-great-great grandmother Kei,” Akaashi says, stepping into the other room, “was a high priestess who happened to be particularly skilled in omikuji. They weren’t just simple answers; she had what some people called a gift for writing fortunes.”

Akaashi comes back and places a jar on the table.

“Go on,” he says, when Koutarou eyes it with apprehension, “shake it.”

“Uh, what?”

“Have you never had an omikuji?”

“We’re not exactly a traditional Japanese family, okay! I have one cousin over there, and he’s kinda weird, so we don’t see him often.” He gives the container a shake, and a bunch of paper scraps fly out. Akaashi snatches one up, and Koutarou barely notices there’s a number on it before Akaashi’s flipping through a ragged book.

“Number 4,” he reads, _“you will experience lifelong luck after an encounter with a stranger.”_

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means lots of things. It means you’ll meet someone special, a partner, a soulmate, or just some stranger who’ll have a profound effect on the rest of your life.”

Koutarou stares, a slow frown blooming over his forehead, until he can barely see Akaashi with how hard he’s squinting in suspicion.

“Traditional omikuji are generic,” Akaashi explains, sweeping the bits of paper up and putting them back in the jar, “good luck, very good luck, bad luck. Basic. But _she_ had something like visions, and she would be overcome with the urge to write the words those visions would bring her. Back then, omikuji were exclusively read in temples, by an attendant or a priestess; you’d shake a canister full of bamboo rods, and the first rod to come out was the number they used. The corresponding number was on a tiny drawer with the fortune inside. It’s more or less the same in modern Japan, minus the attendant. But my grandmother inserted her own fortunes into the drawers at random, and sometimes they’d sit for years without getting drawn, but when they were, they were _always_ specific to that person.”

“So,” Koutarou says slowly. He gestures to the jar and the notebook on the table, “these are all things she wrote.”

“These are all copies, of course,” Akaashi says, “but they’ve been transcribed and collected.”

“Okay. Okay. Family heirloom. I guess I can understand that. Still- this- it’s weird? It’s definitely weird. Like. You and _me?_ A piece of paper called that?”

“A hundred years ago.”

“Oh my god.”

“My whole life has been detailed out like this,” Akaashi says, very prim.

“Wait,” Koutarou says, something clicking in his head, “they were rods? These aren’t rods, they’re little pieces of paper? In a…n ‘all-natural peanut butter’ jar?”

“I know _that,”_ Akaashi snaps. He gets up from the table, standing very straight, with a scowl over his forehead, something that quickly softens into a more sheepish expression. “I may have misplaced the originals.”

“You _lost_ your family heirloom?!”

“Possibly.”

Koutarou stares. Akaashi shifts minutely.

“There are backups, of course- several dozen sets, actually.”

“Uh huh. Isn’t your family going to be like, mad?”

“I guess it’d be possible if they knew.”

“If they _knew-?”_

“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” Akaashi says. He returns to the counter and begins pulling things out of the plastic bags. “The Apocalypse is underway, and I’m here to stop it-”

“The Apocalypse? Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

Koutarou stands up, but it’s not really the best idea he’s had all day, given how his legs go to jelly beneath him, and sits back down again. “Like, _the_ Apocalypse? The end of the world? Fire and brimstone? A war between heaven and hell?”

“I wasn’t aware there was another Apocalypse, so yes.”

“No way. No _way._ That- it’s not _real,_ Akaashi!”  
  
“I beg to differ.”

He abandons the groceries and shuffles through the notebook.

“Number 3457,” he says, _“And in the end will come an eye of the storm, and it rends fire across the sky.”_

“So?” Koutarou protests. He peers over Akaashi’s hands, but everything in the notebook’s written in kanji, something he long ago gave up on learning. “That could be so many things. Also, why is that a fortune?”

Akaashi fixes him with a glare, but steps back and throws the kitchen curtain back. Outside, the sky is dark and angry, a swirling mass of clouds circling like water down the drain over one spot a little ways off. He jumps as lightning tears across the clouds.

“Fire across the sky. Believe me?” Akaashi says. Koutarou doesn’t say anything. Akaashi lets the curtain drop from his hand.

“So,” he says, “you want breakfast?” 

* * *

 

It’s actually less breakfast and more late lunch, as Koutarou finally found a clock and discovered it wasn’t morning anymore, not by a long stretch. Koutarou’s quiet for about two minutes, shoving rice and egg into his mouth, and then he can’t take it anymore, and questions come pouring out of him. It goes something like this:

“Are you a witch?”

“Why would you ask me something like that?”

“I dunno. You seem kinda...witchy.”

“What in all that is holy is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t _know_ , you just do!”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“So, can you like, turn people into frogs and stuff?”

“Witches don’t even do that.”

“Yeah, but _can_ you?”

And so forth. It’s a very lighthearted conversation, considering what’s happening outside, so it all feels very surreal. Koutarou himself can’t quite believe it, but the glimpse of the sky outside the window behind Akaashi keeps reminding him that yes, it’s very real. Even if he still doesn’t believe it.

“So,” Koutarou says, scraping the last bits of burnt rice out of his bowl. Akaashi may be the most attractive one night stand he’s ever had, but he’s not really a great cook. Koutarou’s not about to tell him that, though. He might get turned into a frog, even though Akaashi insists he can’t do that. “How’d you know all this, anyway?”

“I told you, my fortune details it-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Koutarou says, flapping his hand in dismissal, “but your great whatever grandmother couldn’t have known everything.”

“She did.”

“Akaashi. She couldn’t have.”

“I’m only going to say this once more- she did.”

“There’s no way-”

“My great-great-great grandmother more or less prophesied exactly how things were going to happen in my life,” Akaashi says with an air of finality to his voice. Koutarou groans in exasperation.

“If she predicted everything, and the Apocalypse is happening, how come you aren’t out there stopping it? You must know how to stop it...right?”

“Of course. It’s part of my destiny,” he says, shifting in his seat. Koutarou watches one of his fingers as he starts tapping the edge of his coffee mug. He’s starting to figure things out about Akaashi, namely the little nervous tells he doesn’t seem to notice he does.

“I sense there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”

“No,” Akaashi says primly. His fingers wrap around the mug’s handle.

“So...you’re just gonna sit here and have breakfast while the world ends?”

“You seem very restless.”

“You told me the world is going to be gone by tomorrow if we don’t do something to stop it. I still don’t totally believe you, by the way, but I also can’t figure out if you’re lying.”  
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

Koutarou whimpers, and plunks his head down on the table. _Ow._

“Are you okay?”

“I’m very stressed.”

“Don’t stress.”

“You might as well tell me to stop breathing.”

“Look,” Akaashi says. Koutarou feels the edge of something pressing against his forehead, and he lifts his face just enough to look at it. Akaashi slides the notebook into view.

“I can’t read this.”

“Number 93: _When the skies are torn asunder, a sound of thunder.”_

“It’s the first one she ever made,” Akaashi informs him, while Koutarou scowls down at the notbook.

“How come it’s not number one then?”

“That is... _so_ unimportant in the grand scheme of things.”

“I’m just _asking.”_

“The sound of _thunder,”_ Akaashi says, that irritated lilt to his voice, probably annoyed that Koutarou can’t seem to keep up with him. _Excuse_ him for not being a witch. “I’m waiting for the sound of thunder.”

“Yeah, but-” Koutarou says, “-you know what happens. Or, you keep telling me you know what happens.”

“I do.”

“You look suspicious.”

“I do not.”  
  
“You do. You _definitely_ do.”

“How can someone even look suspicious?”

“Well, for one,” Koutarou says, shifting in his seat so he’s sitting ramrod straight, “you won’t look me in the eye.”

Akaashi immediately looks up, but rolls his eyes again.

“If you must know,” he says, “my family has agreed the fortune can be...open to interpretation.”

“Okay, so...what does that mean?”

“It means that the fortunes aren’t always cut and dry. That’s probably what got her killed in the first place. Despite my family’s best efforts over the years at interpreting them, we...haven’t figured out everything.”

Koutarou stares.

“And they tend to make more sense after something happens. The sound of thunder could literally be thunder, or it could be a sound made by something else- a train, for instance, or knocking, someone upstairs moving furniture. Things Kei-baasan wouldn’t have known about in her lifetime. I won’t know for sure until after it happens.”

Koutarou stares some more, a frown beginning to furrow over his forehead.

“This doesn’t seem like the most productive use of a prophecy, or fortune or whatever. Aren’t you supposed to like, use them to play the stock market and stuff?”

“Oh, an uncle in the family managed it quite neatly a few years ago. He’s moved to the Bahamas; it’s lovely over there. But, he was also quite lucky in his interpretation.”

“Seeing what would stick,” Koutarou says.

“Right. So that’s _why_ I have to wait for thunder. To see what sticks.”

There’s something to be said for timing, whether it’s Akaashi’s own personal brand, or the universe’s own running joke. Koutarou’s never really paid much attention to it, unless he landed a prank particularly well, but once in awhile, it would happen so precisely even _he_ would notice.

Just as Koutarou slouches back in his chair to try to pick apart all this information Akaashi’s laid on him, someone pounds on the door. Koutarou looks at Akaashi with wide eyes.

“Is that it? Is that the thunder? It was loud enough, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” Akaashi murmurs as he sweeps past Koutarou towards the door. There’s a big dude in the doorway, and his voice is kinda low and rumbly. Surely somewhere in his life he’s heard voices described like thunder- maybe it’s this guy? This could be a thunderous voice.

But then, and Koutarou wouldn’t believe it if he didn’t see it happen, some other voice comes out of this guy’s mouth, something like, breathier? Maybe? Warmer for sure, and kinda stressed out.

Koutarou blinks twice, hard, wondering if he needs to get his eyes checked, but nope, that voice is still coming out of Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome.

“I’m leaving,” Akaashi calls out, and Koutarou shakes himself out of his staring long enough to slip back to reality.

“Hey- wait!” Koutarou gets stuck standing up, the edge of the table driving into his stomach, and it winds him for just a second, before he’s untangling himself and heading towards the door.

“It’s going to be dangerous,” Akaashi says, before he can even get a word in. He presses a hand to Koutarou’s chest, and it sends up this whole big _stupid_ shitstorm of butterflies in his stomach.

“I don’t want you to go by yourself.”  
“Ushijima will be with me.” He gestures to the other man, who politely holds out a hand. Koutarou’s too preoccupied to shake it.

“I’m Ushijima, Akaashi’s neighbor,” he says, and it’s definitely that deep voice from earlier. Koutarou watched his mouth very carefully. “Akaashi,” Ushijima says, “I think I’m being possessed by a demon.”

_“I’ve told you already, I’m not a demon, and if you continue to call me one, I’ll make your life horrible.”_

“What do you know about exorcisms?”

_“He doesn’t know anything, he’s a witch! Now, can we_ please _get a move on? I’ve already wasted enough time trying to find a host. Oh, stop with the Latin. I’ve done him a favor; you should’ve seen what was lurking in here before I forced it out.”_

“Akaashi,” Koutarou says, reaching up to grasp the bony wrist, “I am _begging_ you not to go with this guy.”

Akaashi is just as wide eyed as Koutarou probably is, but even so, he looks like he has some kind of retort lined up because of _course_ he does. But before he can say anything, Koutarou, and Akaashi too, judging by the way he’s cocked his head, catches the faint sound of the sky splitting in two.

Ushijima frowns, and steps out onto the balcony, looking down the street. Akaashi and Koutarou crowd out behind him, and they all three lean over the railing. The noise doesn’t get gradually louder, like common sense would dictate; instead, it goes from a low rumble to an ear-splitting growl in the space of an instant. It’s a sound that has them all wincing and covering their ears, useless as it is. Koutarou swears he can hear it in his _brain._

The noise, it turns out, isn’t the world turning inside out, but a motorcyle- two- three- four- tearing down the street, one after the other. The sound of the engines reaches a crescendo, so loud that Koutarou’s briefly concerned about permanent damage, but then-

It stops.

A trail of smoke left curling in the street is the only sign that the bikes had been there just seconds before. That, and the ringing in their ears.

“Was that the thunder?” Koutarou says. It sounds like he’s trying to talk underwater, the sound of his voice all muffled. “Akaashi! The thunder?”

Akaashi looks distractedly at him, but nods.

“I think so.”

“What?”

“I _think_ so.”

“It had to be, right? It was so _loud._ I’ve never heard motorcycles that loud.”

“They were loud,” Ushijima agrees.

Akaashi slips by them, back into his apartment. Koutarou’s halfway through following him, but another low grumbling catches his attention. Before he quite realizes it, a car that looks like it’s in the middle of a drag race from hell roars down the street- loud, but not nearly as loud as the bikes- and disappears down the same corner the motorcycles took.

_“Oh,”_ says not-Ushijima, _“Suga’s still alive. That’s good to know.”_

“What?” Koutarou says, “Who’s Suga? Who are _you?_ Or... _what_ are you?”

_“Oikawa. There’s time for storytelling in the car, that we should definitely be moving towards, please and thank you.”_

Akaashi comes out of his apartment then, a bag slung over one shoulder and the notebook in his hands. He looks resolved, frighteningly so, and something like a chasm opens up in Koutarou’s stomach.

“I’m going with you,” he says. Akaashi cuts him a sharp glance.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“It’s going to be dangerous.”

“That’s why I’m going with you.”

Akaashi shuts his mouth very tightly. His knuckles are white around the notebook.

_“This is all very sweet,”_ not-Ushi-- Oikawa-- says, _“but can we move along?”_

“Sorry,” actual-Ushijima says.

“No,” Akaashi says softly. He hasn’t taken his eyes off of Koutarou yet. “He’s right. Time is of the essence here, and we don’t have the luxury of wasting it.” He drops his gaze, and takes a careful step towards the stairs leading to the parking lot. “Also, Ushijima, I believe that’s an angel inhabiting you. Not a demon.”

“Oh.”

_“Finally someone gets it. I’ll even forgive you for attempting to exorcise me earlier, if we can just head out, there we go.”_

Koutarou follows behind Ushijima, Akaashi leading the trio down the stairs. Usually his one night stands end with him getting kicked out of someone’s house, not some _adventure_ to go saving the world. It’s cool and all, and Akaashi...is strange, but Koutarou _wants_ to believe him, as crazy as it sounds. He feels a little like he’s supposed to.

But still, definitely the weirdest hook up.


	3. (the devil)

Tobio always thought he’d want to live in a castle. That’s been his ideal for a solid two weeks, living in a castle and having servants to do everything for him. No bedtime. No baths, unless he wanted. Nobody to tell him what to do or where to go or fix his hair or mind his clothes. Freedom, in what sense his eleven-year-old brain could make of it.

Thing is, freedom’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s _boring,_ is what it is, especially when his friends aren’t listening to him. Kei keeps calling him a tyrant, and in the past Tobio might’ve puffed up with pride over that. _He_ knows about the Tyrannosaurus rex, that it’s a tyrant lizard- _king_ of the dinosaurs- but Kei loves dinosaurs, and the scowl he has when he says tyrant, over and over, leads Tobio to believe it’s not very nice. And Tadashi agrees with everything Kei says, even if he’s pretty nice most of the time. But if _Tadashi_ agrees, then Shouyou agrees, because Shouyou defects at every opportunity, and now Tobio’s kingdom is beginning to fall apart.

“Don’t see why we have to stick ‘round here,” Shouyou says, after Kei’s stopped his ranting for a minute. “Not like there’s anything to do.”

“There’s _plenty_ to do!” Tobio says, “there’s the castle, and- and rides! And the zoo-”

“They’re all out there!” Shouyou cries, completely ignoring the very cool and very interesting castle he’s currently pouting in, “and you won’t let us leave!”

“We-ll, we’ve got to stick together. A ruler has to have subjects to rule over.”

“The subjects’ve got to have freedom!”

“Freedom’s boring!”

He didn’t mean to shout, but Shouyou’s always managed to effortlessly get on his nerves. And besides, _they’re_ the ones who were talking about a castle, and rides, and a bigger playground that’s not been taken over by the rotten kids on the third floor of the apartment complex. At least they should be grateful for what he’s given them!

He doesn’t particularly notice sound of thunder. The lightning’s been flashing outside for ages already, and the thunder is now just a natural addition. He doesn’t particularly notice the looks on his friends’ faces, either, how Shouyou’s gone from challenging to cowering, Kei’s frown, Hitoka trembling behind Tadashi. He’s turning the world inside out for them, and this is how they repay him- with disloyalty. They’ll learn, oh, they’ll learn from this mistake-

The doors blow open, and Tobio’s shaken from his fixation. Four tall figures are striding down the carpeted walkway towards his court, _un_ invited, with three identical, smug grins. The fourth figure has a bike helmet on, and the only thing visible on the shiny surface is the reflection of the lights flickering on the ceiling, but it still feels distinctly like the figure is staring at each one of them.

“What’re you doing here?” Tobio demands. The other children look to him, surprised by his boldness in the face of these eerie creatures. He handles their presence like he does everything else in his life- with determination, and an utter disregard for the consequence of such determination. Laughter ripples through the group of figures, like the answer is clear.

“We’ve been summoned,” one of them says, the one with wild red hair and wide, wide eyes.

“By who?” Tobio asks.

“Well, not anyone specifically,” the red figure says. “The world, I guess, if you have to have an answer. But you’re the one who’s kickstarted it.” He then laughs a laugh that sounds like bullets and knives and heartache. Tobio stares him down from his seat on the plush throne, and the laughter peters out.

“Started what?” Tobio asks. Eight sets of eyes land on him- well, maybe seven- half in admiration, half in the same bewildered confusion that most adults encounter when talking with Tobio.

“The Apocalypse,” another one of the figures says, a lady with hair the color of summer wheat left to rot under the sun. She says it in a very cool tone of voice, like she’s trying to be soothing, but has only ever had bad interactions with every child she’s come across. She moves forward a little bit, like she’s trying to casually approach Tobio’s throne but not look like she’s doing it. “Can’t you feel the calling in your heart? A new world that you can rule over?”

“A new world?” says the last unmasked figure, “I thought it was the end!”

The woman stops her slow inching forward with an enormous roll of her eyes, and spins on the figure with close cut hair, grabbing him by the neck faster than anyone can even see.

“Whoa,” says Red, taking a gleeful step towards the scuffle, “this whole time he really didn’t know?”

“He’s young,” says Blonde, “and he’s filling in. Pestilence just _had_ to run himself into penicillin last week.”

Gray oozes out of her grasp, running his hands over his buzz cut and his clothes like he’s trying to straighten up the mess she made, even though he’s leaving dark, greasy fingerprints over his clothes.

Tobio shifts a little, like it’s finally clicked for him what these figures are doing here.

“I don’t feel nothin’,” he says, “and I don’t want anythin’. I want you to leave.”

 _THAT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN,_ says the figure in black. When he speaks, the children scatter back, all huddling behind Tobio’s throne, but peeking out behind the chair. _THE END IS NIGH, AND WE’RE HERE TO USHER IT IN._

“Just- just a second.”

To the surprise of a great many little eyes, _another_ figure comes stumbling in through the doors, in a billowing cloud of black smoke. He staggers down the carpeted walkway, looking like he’s about to flop over at any minute, stopping just behind the four.

“You’ve got it all wrong, you know,” he says. He bends at the waist, hands resting on his knees, his breath coming out in big, rattling gasps. This close, it looks like _he’s_ the one made of smoke, not that he’s just surrounded by it; the gray of his hair looks like it’s come loose at the ends, little bits of it curling off towards the ceiling.

_WHAT DO YOU MEAN?_

“I mean,” he says, pointing vaguely in Tobio’s direction, “that he’s the one running the show here.”

_HE IS THE HARBINGER OF THE END, YES. HE WILL USHER IN A NEW ERA OF CHAOS, AS THE HEAVENS TEAR THEMSELVES APART._

“Yeah, yeah, great stuff really, ‘cept I don’t think that’s what he wants to do. Is it, Tobio?”

The smoky figure straightens up, and the kids are too awestruck to notice the desperate wheeze to his voice, or the way his body wobbles even with just the effort of standing up straight.

“You don’t want the world to end, do you, Tobio?”

_IT ISN’T THE END. IT’S A NEW BEGINNING, A NEW WORLD. TOBIO, WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO RULE OVER A NEW WORLD?_

The figure takes a long step towards the throne.

_A WORLD YOU CAN GUIDE AS YOU SEE FIT, WITH SUBJECTS WHO WILL OBEY YOUR EVERY WHIM. A PERFECT WORLD, SCULPTED BY YOUR HANDS._

The figure has taken several more steps forward, ascending the steps, until he’s leaning over Tobio, hands curled around the top of the carved throne, helmet gleaming.

 _you could have it all,_ the thing whispers, in a voice rattling like dry bones, _if you just reach out and take it._

For one heavy, tense moment, Tobio stares, not at the creature looming over him, but the figure cloaked in smoke. He stares and stares, with a piercing gaze, like he’s picking apart this person’s life story with just his eyes. The figure in smoke takes it with no protest, even as his appearance obviously begins to fall apart. His head is almost entirely swathed in smoke, the sunglasses he stumbled in with melting off his face, the raggedy jacket he’s wearing beginning to burst at the seams. It’s killing him, this staring contest, but he doesn’t look away, doesn’t so much as blink as Tobio reads him.

“This new world,” Tobio says, in a voice far more authoritative than his eleven years should allow, “the people. They wouldn’t have a choice?”

_THEY’D OBEY YOUR EVERY COMMAND. THAT IS CORRECT._

“They’d listen to me? All the time?”

_CORRECT._

Tobio inhales, puffing up his cheeks, and releasing the breath in a raspberry.

“Well, that’s not very much fun, then.”

And then, it stops. All of it.

Like a bubble popping, the storm outside lifts, the clouds disappearing like water down the dreaded bathtub drain, making way for a bright blue sky. The oppressive aura inside the castle evaporates quickly enough to be disorienting, and the children stumble out from behind the throne. The black figure reels backwards on spindly limbs as Tobio stands up and steps forward.

“It’s boring if I have to make all the choices for everyone,” he says, a stubborn frown on his forehead, “and people’ve got to have their freedom, you know.”

 **“** But,” Red says, “you’d _rule_ them. Who cares about them?”

The scowl on Tobio’s face deepens.

“I don’t like you very much,” he says, and in the blink of an eye, Red is gone. Just gone. There one moment and gone the next. The other people stare hard at the spot where he just was, some shocked, some frightened, and some obviously indifferent.

“Well,” the one with the close cut gray hair says, “at least it’ll be quiet with War gone.”

Tobio reels on him, too, pointing an accusatory finger.

“I don’t like you very much, either.” Blink. Gone.

“Hey!” screams the lady, “You can’t do that to my brother-!” Blink. Gone.

 _HUH_ , says the black figure.

“Oh Lord above or below,” the smoky figure says. He wobbles on his feet again, looking close to collapsing, but the attention’s drawn away from him when someone _else_ bursts in through the doors with a squawk.

_“Don’t you die on me, Suga! Not after it took me so long to get here- Wait. What’s going on?”_

“Oikawa! Izzat you? You look...different.”

_“I’m hitching a ride. Don’t fall over, idiot, here-”_

“Mr. Ushiwaka, what are you doing here?”

The kids recognize the familiar face from the apartment upstairs and rush towards him. Hitoka, small as she is, latches onto the corner of his shirt and doesn’t let go.

“What are _you_ all doing here?” ‘Mr. Ushiwaka’ asks in return. _“How_ did you get here?”

_“‘Mr. Ushiwaka? Oh, that’s cute.”_

“Mr. Ushiwaka,” Shouyou pipes up, “why are you talking like two people? You sound funny.”

Wakatoshi, at that moment, becomes aware of Tobio’s presence. He can _feel_ this kid’s eyes on him, almost like he’s prodding inside his head, picking apart not just the incredulous and frankly unbelievable events of the past few hours, but his entire life, every struggle and memory and wayward feeling he’s ever had.

Wakatoshi’s always had the feeling that Tobio was acutely attuned to other people, but never on a scale like this.

He doesn’t have much opportunity to dwell on it, though, because in an instant, there’s something like a balloon popping in his head, an immense pressure that bursts, and leaves behind a peculiarly empty feeling where something once was. He staggers under the sudden feeling, pressing a hand to his forehead. Hitoka whines, and the little dove-soft cry brings him back to himself. Shaking his head, he’s aware of two things: one- every sensation in his body is magnified, and he’s feeling, seeing, touching things in a way he’s sure he’s never done before. Two, and this one’s a stretch- the voice inside his head now has a body.

Shouyou shouts with delight at this sudden appearance of a new person and leaps forward into his space, with leads Wakatoshi to believe that no, he’s not hallucinating.

“Who are you?” Shouyou asks, bouncing on the tips of his toes. “Where’d you come from? Who’s _he?_ Is he really made of smoke?”

The person whom Oikawa called ‘Suga’ is half- draped over one of Wakatoshi’s arms, and upon realizing, Wakatoshi scrambles to better support his weight. Oikawa looks around, far less mystified than he _should_ be, observing the children and one bouncing Shouyou in front of him, while slinking to Suga’s other side and slipping a hand around his waist.

“No, he’s not made of smoke,” Oikawa answers, hoisting him up a bit, “see? I couldn’t touch him if he was. But- _ugh-_ seriously, Suga, were you on fire or something?”

“I...may have been at one point. ‘S not important. Tobio,” he says, lurching forward between the two sets of arms propping him up, “do you want to end this?”

All eyes turn towards Tobio, who goes from stern observer to startled center of attention.

“Wait,” Oikawa says, “did I miss it?”

“Hush. Tobio?”

“Well, I- I didn’t mean anything _bad_ by it.”

“I know you didn’t,” Suga says softly, “but there’s still a choice to be made.”

Tobio claps his hands to his elbows, holding his arms and frowning down at the floor. He suddenly looks less an intimidating ruler and more a nervous eleven-year-old boy who maybe made a mistake.

“I just want my friends to have a good time,” he says in a small voice, raising his eyes hesitantly to meet Suga’s golden ones. “ ‘N I don’t want anyone to be hurt or upset.”

Suga nods, but Oikawa interrupts.

“Are you for serious? I _missed_ the prevention of the Apocalypse?!”

 _I’M STILL HERE,_ the figure in black says, raising one hand in an awkward wave, _SO YOU DIDN’T MISS IT ALL._

“Oh, shut up. No one ever remembers Death.”

The dark figure whimpers and lowers his hand, curling in on himself in what could be classified as a mighty sulk. The children stare wide eyed at the figure, now that Oikawa gave him a name.

“Are you really dead?” Shouyou asks immediately, whirling his attention onto the figure.

“You can’t be Death,” Kei says, pushing his glasses up his nose, “Death has a big scythe and it looks like a skeleton.”

“Tsukki,” whimpers Tadashi, “maybe you shouldn’t-”

_WHO SAYS I DON’T LOOK LIKE A SKELETON?_

“You’re all covered up. We can’t see anything past that helmet.”

 _“O-_ kay kids, I don’t think you’re ready for that trauma,” Oikawa says, as the figure begins to lift his helmet. Wakatoshi abandons his spot by Suga’s side to corral the children away from the dark figure, who’s maybe starting to deflate again, now that no one’s paying him any mind.

“How did you get here?” Wakatoshi asks again. Hitoka still clings to his side, and she pipes up in her small voice.

“Tobio did it,” she tells him. “He was talking about a place where we wouldn’t get in trouble, and no bullies would bother us, and we could play all day if we wanted, but we had to listen to him. And then the sky started turning real black, and we were gonna leave, but then we ended up in here.”

For such a timid little girl, she relays all this information to Wakatoshi very matter-of-factly, even though she has an iron grip on his hand, and keeps nervously looking behind her shoulder. The rest of the kids trail behind him as he starts walking towards the door, Oikawa dragging Suga along at the very back.

“That guy’s still back there,” Tadashi says, skirting a _little_ closer to Wakatoshi.

“He’ll always be around,” Oikawa says, “that’s unavoidable. But he’s nothing to be afraid of.”

_I HEARD THAT._

Oikawa doesn’t dignify it with a response. Wakatoshi hears a scoff, and then a whisper of noise, but upon turning, the figure is gone, leaving not even unsettled dust in his wake.

 

The kids are much more excited as soon as they step out the door, all five of them bolting down the stairs and scurrying over the open expanse of the courtyard. Their excitement means they miss Wakatoshi’s next door neighbor sweeping over and, from what he learned in the car, his neighbor’s _definitely_ not-boyfriend, trailing behind him.

“Where are you going?” Akaashi demands immediately. Wakatoshi’s taken aback by the sharpness of his tone; all his interactions with his neighbor, up until this point, have been rather pleasant.

“It’s over,” Suga slurs. He looks like he’s fading fast, wilting like a flower against Oikawa’s side.

“Over?” says the not-boyfriend.

“It can’t be over,” Akaashi says, before anyone else can get a word in. He seems genuinely angry about it, too. “There are _things_ that need to happen first.”

“What things?” someone pipes up. Oh, Shouyou’s come back around at the appearance of someone new.  
“There needs to be a-a sword,” Akaashi says, confused by this kid in front of him, “at least. And spirits of the underworld”

“A _sword?_ Cool! Where is it?”

“Ah, they’re gone,” Suga says, waving his hand.  
  
“They can’t be.”

“They _are.”_

“That’s not the way it’s supposed to go-”

“You seem to be forgetting that human beings have this little gift called ‘free will,’” Oikawa interrupts. Akaashi seems to notice him and Suga for the first time, and frowns between the two of them.

“Are you-” Akaashi starts, but stops. Looks at Wakatoshi, and to Oikawa, and back and forth a few more times.

“Yes,” Wakatoshi says, answering the unasked question before it has a chance to come out of Akaashi’s mouth. “It’s been a very strange day.”

“But this isn’t what happens,” he says. If Wakatoshi knew him better, he might be able to pick out that tiny touch of frenzy to him, but, as he doesn’t, the desperation slips by.

“The fortune of my life,” Akaashi says, in a calm, but forced voice, “detailed the end of the world prevented by certain tools and a sacrifice.”

“Oh, that’s bleak,” Suga says.

“According to my fortune,” Akaashi continues with a bit of a withering glare in Suga’s direction, “my life would end as the world began again.”

“This is sounding very familiar,” Oikawa says.

“Hey, wait a minute!” The not-boyfriend stumbles forward, and Wakatoshi notices now how wet his clothing is, too. They both look like they’ve been through the eye of a hurricane to get here- oh yeah. They did kinda drive through a hurricane to get here.

“You were just gonna _sacrifice_ yourself?” he says. “Just like that?”

“The fortune-” Akaashi says, and it’s interesting. He actually shifts minutely, something like guilt flickering over his face as the not-boyfriend switches gears faster than a lightbulb.

“I don’t give a _shit_ about the fortune!” he says. His voice carries over the open courtyard, and the kids all stop and stare at him. Shouyou makes a point of inserting himself right in the middle of the conversation.

“You said a bad word,” he says solemnly. The not-boyfriend looks down, torn between his anger and this reprimand.

“I’m sorry,” he answers “I’m sorry!” to the other kids who’ve stopped to stare at him. He seems to be deflating in front of them all, turning in on himself as Akaashi stares with wide eyes.

“Oh, wait a minute,” Suga says, “you’re that hitchhiker we picked up the other day, aren’t you? Or a fortune teller? Wandering student?”

“Yes,” Oikawa answers.

“I thought so. I have your thing-”

He struggles to stand up straight, changing directions so quickly that Oikawa almost topples over. He swerves down the path, behind the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. Shouyou bounces after him before anyone else can even take a step forward. Akaashi looks between the rest of them, confusion clearly evident on his face, and follows after Shouyou. The not-boyfriend follows because of course he does, although he looks like he’s sulking now, and Wakatoshi follows because he’s nosy.

Around the corner sits a burned out shell of what was once a car, blackened beyond recognition. Suga has toppled into the driver’s seat, the door coming completely off its hinges when he opens it, and he rummages around in what looks like a pile of soot. Wakatoshi has to hook Shouyou by the back of his t shirt to keep him from scurrying around the car and climbing into the other seat to watch.

“Aha!” Suga says, pulling something indistinguishable from the rest of the car out of this pile of ash. He holds it out towards Akaashi, a brilliant grin on his face.

“Thanks,” says Akaashi, less- than- enthusiastically. The blackened tube rests innocently in his palm.

“So these are the originals?” the not-boyfriend asks, butting into Akaashi’s personal space to examine the tube. He still appears to be upset, but his curiosity is winning over his anger.

“Yes,” Akaashi answers. He unscrews the top of the canister, and a handful of slender rods slide out into his palm. He breathes out a sigh of relief. “And they appear to be unharmed.”

“Good ol’ Grandma Kei,” not-boyfriend says. He snatches the tube before Akaashi can react, and shakes out a rod.

“Akaashi, I need to know if I’ll win a billion dollars. What’s number 8?”

“Bad fortune.”

“Wha-at? You didn’t even look it up!”

“The basic fortunes are easy to remember. Number 8 is ‘bad fortune.’”

“Fine. What about...number 17?”

“Another basic. ‘Great fortune.’”

 _“Really?_ So, uhm-”

He shoves the cylinder back into Akaashi’s hands, suddenly serious.

“If I were to ask you out, would you say yes?”

Akaashi inhales, and turns his head, like he’s concentrating on the horizon, where the sun slowly begins to sink.

“You think you’re smooth?” Akaashi asks. He’s ignoring the flush that’s creeping up his neck.

But Wakatoshi can’t ignore how uncomfortable he now is, watching what seems to be the tentative blossom of something romantic. He coughs loudly into his fist, and grabs Shouyou’s hand, before he can wedge himself into any other mischief. There’s a bubble of laughter behind him as he turns quickly, but he doesn’t stop long enough to care. He’s ready to round up the kids and take them back to the apartment complex, and then crash at his own place. Put something mindless on TV until he falls asleep.

He has a feeling that he’ll forget all about the events of today by the time he wakes up tomorrow morning, but until then, he’d like to empty his brain. There are some things he’d like to forget, and the sooner the better.


	4. (the end)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a brief epilogue

“Sorry about the car.”

Suga shrugs, and takes another pull from the bottle of wine. It’s something that’s always kicked around in the backseat, emergency alcohol that never really disappeared no matter how much they drank, and changed according to what they were in the mood for. Oikawa’s shared it with him many times, and sitting in the front of his car, the burnt-out husk of metal that _used_ to be his car, passing the bottle back and forth, feels almost like old times. Back when his car was still a car.

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” Suga says, patting the half-melted dashboard fondly. Something clanks within the car, then rattles loose as Suga does so. He sighs. Oikawa pats his hand.

“They really don’t, do they?” Oikawa says.

“Plastic. They’re _plastic_ now. Do you know how far I would’ve gotten if I was driving plastic?”

“Not very?”

“I wouldn’t have made it off the block. No, she- she did me right, even to the end.”

He passes the bottle back to Oikawa. Today it’s Chateau Lafite- 1865, a _beautiful_ vintage- and it makes him think of other places.

“I still can’t believe I missed everything,” Oikawa says. Suga huffs.

“Not _everything._ You got here just in time to see me realize I was probably going to die.”

“You wouldn’t have _died_. Stop being so dramatic.”

“Says the angel that burst in and nearly swept me off my feet.” Suga turns his head and laughs. Oikawa’s grinning around the mouth of the bottle, the last bits of the sun filtering across his face.

“What do you say we get out of here?” Suga asks. Oikawa’s eyes slide over to meet his. His mouth pops off the bottle with a soft sound.

“Where would we go?” he counters, but he’s already corking the wine.

“Anywhere,” Suga says softly. “I think she’s got a little more life left in her.”

He tries the ignition, and his car purrs to life. Oikawa fastens his seatbelt- useless, considering the doors have disintegrated- and switches on the radio.

_Made in heaven, made in heaven. It was all meant to be-_

“Ah, shut up,” Suga says. Oikawa chortles with laughter, and turns the radio up just a notch louder.

Not that Suga really minds.


End file.
